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Sunday, 25 August 2013

EDIT ALL NONA PRESENTS WHITE FUNGUS ISSUE 13 RELEASE IN NEW ZEALAND

White
Fungus is about to celebrate the release of its 13th issue at Puppies
in Wellington on Friday September 6. New Zealand/Korean artist Samin Son
has curated an explosive line-up to bring out the occasion. The night
will feature performances by Power Nap, Audio Tears, Cartoon, Foxtrot,
Secretaries on Standby, Tapioca Dragon, The Stumps, The All Seeing Hand
and Campbell James Kneale plus DJ sets by Stevie Kaye and Edit All Nona.
Entry is $15 and kicks off at 7pm sharp, the first 100 people to attend
will receive a free copy of the magazine.

The new issue of White Fungus is packed with New Zealand content,
including an in-depth article on the subject of bats by Tessa Laird, a
20-page comic by Tim Bollinger, and fashion spreads by Auckland artists
Clara Chon and Richard Orjis. Auckland curator and writer Andrew
Clifford talks to artist Brydee Rood about life in transit, and Mark
Amery writes about the Wellington Media Collective. New Zealand art
critic John Hurrell writes about the veteran New York artist Tony
Martin, including his work in the 1960s at Howard Wise, a New York
gallery connected to the New Zealand artists Len Lye and Billy Apple.

White Fungus is an arts magazine and interdisciplinary project based in
Taiwan and New Zealand. 2013 has already been an eventful year for the
project. The year has already seen a magazine residency in San
Francisco, a motorcycle accident for the publication's editor Ron
Hanson, inclusion of White Fungus in an exhibition in Russia, the
holding of a smash “Noise” event in Taipei, and now a New Zealand
distribution deal with Gordon & Gotch for its new 13th issue.

Hanson says that for years running the magazine the going was steady
and slow, but in 2012 the publication had a breakout year. At the
beginning of that year White Fungus was selected for the exhibition
Millennium Magazines at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It would
be the first of 17 exhibitions and fairs White Fungus was selected for
in 2012, in places including the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, Cyprus,
Italy, the Netherlands, Tokyo, Dublin, Prague, China and Vancouver.
White Fungus was exhibited in the New Zealand pavilion at the Frankfurt
Book Fair.

Hanson says that White Fungus is at once global
and local. “We're interested and engaged with localism,” he says, “but
we conduct that engagement on a global scale. The publication began in
Wellington, and even more specifically, in Te Aro, but we had just
returned from four years living in Taiwan, so it began out of a kind of
dialogue between and within those two locations, and that's continued.
In both places we were interested in the effect of rapid urban
development. We were also interested in the position of both being small
countries having to hold their own in the wild currents of
globalisation and the challenge to define yourself in that context.”

Recently New Zealand became the first OECD country to sign a free trade
deal with Taiwan, a move that could precipitate more cultural exchanges
between the two. “We've invested a lot of time in Taiwan,” Hanson says.
“It's become a second home. We're really interested in bringing New
Zealand artists to Taiwan and through the magazine we're laying the
groundwork for future exchanges. Last year we took the Taipei sound
artist Wang Fujui to New Zealand for a national tour with light
installations and sound performances in Christchurch, Wellington,
Auckland and Hamilton. He really had a great time meeting people and
encountering some of the artists. The next step is to bring some New
Zealand artists over here.”

To request interviews, review
copies of the magazine or high-resolution images, contact Abby Leggett
at abby.k.leggett@gmail.com